December is one of my favorite months. Not every year, I suppose, but this year it is really speaking to me. It's so dark and sparkly, so velvety and smooth. I love how much privacy December gives us—all quietude and long nights. It is a month for sleeping and resting and eating well. A month for chilling out on our fitness routines and enjoying the softness of our bodies between flannel sheets. It's a time for soup, possibly for sickness (flu season, you beast!), for baking extra treats and preparing for holidays and time off of school or work. There's just something about it. My unsolicited advice is that you revel in it. Forgive yourself if you don't feel like going to the gym. Let yourself rest more. Skip the diets and cleanses and instead eat lots of (mostly good) food. Feed your body. Hibernate. Celebrate. Stand outside at night and watch your breath float up to the stars.

This month and this season might seem less than ideal with the short grey days and long cold nights, but I assure you it is good for us. This is a time to clarify and distill. The darkness forces us inward, sends us home at earlier hours, and often sends us to bed earlier too. This isn't a time for wild productivity or killer fitness routines, not really. It's for figuring shit out. It's for journaling or writing letters, catching up on communications, dreaming, planning, making art, baking cookies and making soup. It's a time for satisfying cravings. It's a time to buy a calendar for next year and think about what you want it to look like. Perhaps you want next year to be a year where you don't need a calendar.

However this month is shaping up for you, and regardless of if you're resting and baking or traveling and partying, here is what I think: it is important right now to say what you mean and to say what you want. These are the final hours of this year, the darkest hours before the dawn: the solstice brings new light, Christmas brings what it brings, and the New Year follows fast on it's heels. This is not a time for people-pleasing or obligations. This is not a time to put yourself to the side while you tend to everything else.

This is a time to decide. The clearer you are now, the stronger the new year will be; the less shit you will drag along with you into 2016. Don't bring extra baggage, it's never a good idea. It makes it much harder to fit in certain places and it also hurts your shoulders. Here's the hard part, being clear on what you want doesn't end there—you have to communicate it to people. You have to tell them exactly what you want. Otherwise no one will know. And that will disappoint you.

December is a month where the air and nights are crisp and clear. Use this as your reminder. Be crisp and clear. Whatever it is you are hoping for, be it a gift, a way of life, a change at home, a plan put in action....whatever it is, tell people you want it. Be brutally specific. Don't dance around things for the sake of politeness and don't put it in ways that you think will make it better for people to hear. Instead, say it simply and clearly. Say it, and watch it take shape from the ether, watch it stand next to you in solidarity, watch it march forward with definition and force, because that's what you gave it. Give it words. In return, it will give you action.